Harding of Allenwood Part 49

"Yes," Beatrice said in a strained voice. "It seems impossible to do anything else."

"A broken engagement's a serious matter; we Mowbrays keep our word. I hope you're quite sure of your ground."

"What I heard left no room for doubt."

"Did you hear the man's defense?"

"I refused to listen," said Beatrice coldly. "That he should try to excuse himself only made it worse."

"I'm not sure that's very logical. I'll confess that Harding and I seldom agree, but one must be fair."

"Does that mean that one ought to be lenient?" Beatrice asked with an angry sparkle in her eyes.

Mowbray was conscious of some embarra.s.sment. His ideas upon the subject were not sharply defined, but if it had not been his daughter who questioned him he could have expressed them better. Beatrice ought to have left her parents to deal with a delicate matter like this, but instead she had boldly taken it into her own hands. He had tried to bring up his children well, but the becoming modesty which characterized young women in his youth had gone.

"No," he answered; "not exactly lenient. But the thing may not be so bad as you think--and one must make allowances. Then, a broken engagement reflects upon both parties. Even if one of them has an unquestionable grievance, it proves that that person acted very rashly in making a promise in the first instance."

"Yes," said Beatrice; "that is my misfortune. I was rash and easily deceived. I made the bargain in confiding ignorance, without reserve, while the man kept a good deal back."

"But your mother tells me that he declared he had never seen the woman; and Harding is not a liar."

"I used to think so, but it looks as if I were mistaken," Beatrice answered bitterly as she turned away.

Leaving him, she found a quiet spot in the shadow of a bluff, and sat down to grapple with her pain. It had hurt more than she had thought possible to cast off Harding, and she could bear her trouble only by calling pride to her aid. There was, she told herself, much about the man that had from the first offended her, but she had made light of it, believing him steadfast and honorable. Now she knew she had been deceived. She had been ready to throw away all the privileges of her station; she had disregarded her friends' opinion--and this was her reward! The man for whom she would have made the sacrifice was gross and corrupt; but n.o.body should guess that she found it strangely hard to forget him.

Lance came upon her, there at the edge of the woods; but her head was buried in her arms and she did not see him. The boy turned at once and went to have a talk with his father. His expression was very resolute when he entered Mowbray's study.

"What are you going to do about Bee's trouble, sir?" he asked abruptly.

His father gave him an amused smile.

"I haven't decided," he said. "Have you anything useful to suggest?"

"I feel that you ought to put it right."

"Can you tell me how?"

"No. Of course, it's a delicate matter; but you have a wider knowledge and experience."

"Umh!" the Colonel grunted. "Why do you conclude that your sister's wrong?"

"I know the man. He's not the kind she thinks."

"Your mother saw the woman, and heard what she said."

"There's been a mistake," Lance persisted. "I've a suspicion that somebody may have put her up to it."

"Made a plot to blacken Harding, you mean? Rather far-fetched, isn't it?

Whom do you suspect?"

Lance turned red, for his father's tone was sarcastic, and he thought of Gerald; but he could not drop a hint against his brother.

"I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out."

"When you have found out, you can tell me," Mowbray answered, and gave the boy an approving smile. "You're quite right in standing by your friend, and you certainly owe Harding something. If you can prove him better than we think, n.o.body will be more pleased than I."

Lance had to be satisfied with this. He did not know how to set about his investigations, but he determined to visit Winnipeg as soon as he could.

For the next week or two there was quietness at the Grange. The dry weather held, and boisterous winds swept the sunburned plain. The sod cracked, the wheat was shriveling, and although in public men and women made a brave pretense of cheerfulness, in private they brooded over the ruin that threatened them. To make things worse, three or four days a week, heavy clouds that raced across the sky all morning gathered in solid banks at noon, and then, as if in mockery, broke up and drove away. Few of the settlers had much reserve capital, and the low prices obtained for the last crop had strained their finances; but Harding was, perhaps, threatened most.

He had, as had been his custom, boldly trusted to the earth all he had won by previous effort, and this year it looked as if the soil would refuse its due return. Still, his taking such a risk was only partly due to the prompting of his sanguine temperament. While he had hope of winning Beatrice he must stake his all on the chance of gaining influence and wealth. He had lost her; but after a few black days during which he had thought of abandoning the struggle and letting things drift, he quietly resumed his work. What he had begun must be finished, even if it brought no advantage to himself. The disaster that seemed unavoidable braced him to sterner effort; but when dusk settled down he stood in the dim light and brooded over his withering wheat. Being what he was, a man of constructive genius, it cut deep that he must watch the grain that had cost so much thought and toil go to waste; but the red band on the prairie's edge and the luminous green above it held only a menace.

One day Harding drove with Devine to a distant farm, and they set out on the return journey late in the afternoon. It was very hot, for the wind had died away, and deep stillness brooded over the lifeless plain. The gophers that made their burrows in the trail had lost their usual briskness, and sat up on their haunches until the wheels were almost upon them. The prairie-chickens the horses disturbed would not rise, but ran a few yards and sank down in the parched gra.s.s. The sky was leaden, and the prairie glimmered a curious, livid white. Harding's skin p.r.i.c.kled, and he was conscious of a black depression and a headache.

"If this only meant rain!" he exclaimed dejectedly. "But I've given up hope."

"Something's surely coming," Devine replied, glancing at a great bank of cloud that had changed its color to an oily black. "If this weather holds for another week, the crop will be wiped out, but somehow I can't believe we'll all go broke."

Harding had once thought as his comrade did, but now his optimistic courage had deserted him. The future was very dark. He meant to fight on, but defeat seemed certain. It would be easier to bear because he had already lost what he valued most.

Presently the wagon wheels sank in yielding sand, and that roused him.

"Our hauling costs us high with these loose trails. I'd counted on cutting more straw with the crop this year and using it to bind the road. But now we may not have any grain to send out."

The plan was characteristic of him, though his dejection was not. As a rule, straw has no value in a newly opened country, and not much is cut with the grain, the tall stubble being burned off; but Harding had seen a use for the waste material in improving the means of transport.

"Well," said Devine, "we'd better hustle. The team won't stand for a storm."

Harding urged the horses, and as the wheels ran out on firm ground the pace grew faster, and a distant bluff began to rise from the waste. When they were a mile or two from the woods there was a rumble of thunder and the light grew dim. The dark sky seemed descending to meet the earth, the bluff grew indistinct, but the burned gra.s.s still retained its ghostly whiteness. Then the temperature suddenly fell, and when a puff of cold wind touched his face Harding used the whip. He knew what was going to happen.

Throwing up their heads in alarm as a pale flash glimmered across the trail, the team broke into a gallop, while the light wagon rocked and swung as the wheels jolted over hummocks and smashed through scrubby brush. Harding did not think he could hold the horses in the open when the storm broke, and he did not wish to be hurled across the rugged prairie behind a bolting team. Springing down when they reached the trees, he and Devine locked the wheels and then stood waiting at the horses' heads. All was now very still again, but a gray haze was closing in. Now and then leaves stirred and rustled, and once or twice a dry twig came down. The faint crackle it made jarred on the men's tingling nerves.

Harding found it difficult to keep still. He slowly filled his pipe for the sake of occupation. The match he struck burned steadily, but its pale flame was suddenly lost in a dazzling glare as the lightning fell in an unbroken fork from overhead to a corner of the bluff. Then the pipe dropped and was trodden on, as the men swayed to and fro, using all their strength to hold the plunging team. It was only for a moment they heard the battering hoofs, for a deafening crash that rolled across the heavens drowned all other sound, and as it died away the trees began to moan. A few large drops of rain fell, and then, as the men watched it, gathering a faint hope, the rain turned to hail. A savage wind struck the bluff, the air got icy cold, and the hail changed from fine grains to ragged lumps. Harding could hear it roar among the trees between the peals of thunder, until the scream of wind and the groan of bending branches joined in and formed a wild tumult of sound.

Though the men stood to lee of the woods, the hail found them out, bruising their faces and cutting their wet hands; even their bodies afterward felt as if they had been beaten. It raked the bluff like rifle-fire, cutting twigs and shredding leaves, and the wild wind swept the wreckage far to leeward. Light branches were flying, and Harding was struck, but his grapple with the maddened horses demanded all his thought. The lightning leaped about them and blazed through the woods, silhouetting bending trees and the horses' tense, wet bodies, before it vanished and left what seemed to be black darkness behind.

Then, when the men were getting exhausted, the thunder grew fainter and the bitter wind died away. There was a strange, perplexing stillness in the heavy gloom, until the cloud-ranks parted and a ray of silver light broke through. The gra.s.s steamed as the beam moved across it, and suddenly the bluff was warm and bright, and they could see the havoc that had been made.

Torn branches hung from the poplars, slender birch-twigs lay in heaps, and banks of hail, now changing fast to water, stretched out into the wet, sparkling plain.

Harding's face was very stern as he picked up a handful of the icy pieces.

"With a strong wind behind it, this stuff would cut like a knife," he said. "Well, it has saved our putting the binders into the grain."

Devine made a sign of gloomy agreement. There was no hope left; the crop they had expected much from was destroyed.

They clambered into the wagon and drove for some time before the first farmstead began to lift above the edge of the plain. In the meanwhile the hail that glistened in the gra.s.s tussocks melted away, and only a few dark clouds drifting to the east marred the tranquillity of the summer evening. The men were silent, but Devine understood why his comrade drove so hard, holding straight across dry sloos where the tall gra.s.s crackled about the wheels, and over billowy rises where the horses' feet sank deep in sand. He was anxious to learn the worst, and Devine feared that it would prove very bad.